


Light gathered in you

by lbmisscharlie



Category: The Hour
Genre: Casual Sex, F/F, Flirting, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 12:38:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5626972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lbmisscharlie/pseuds/lbmisscharlie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bel looks at her, sidelong. Her lashes are long, mascaraed dark, and her mouth coral pink. “I did wonder,” she says. “If you were – a Sapphist.” She says the archaic word so delicately that Lix has to laugh, which makes Bel pink up and drop her gaze.</p><p>“I’m – not fussy,” Lix says. She shifts her weight just so, her forearm brushing Bel’s elbow. Bel doesn’t look up, but takes a breath, lifts her glass to her mouth, and swallows her wine down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light gathered in you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neifile7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neifile7/gifts).



They come in a pair: always have, except for a few divergent moments, and they did then. To Alexandra Palace, hired on the same day to work on newsreels. They’re all in the same office and some days it’s all Lix can do to not tear at her hair over the loudness of their silent conversations, looks and sneers and soft smiles tossed between them.

They’re both quite sweet, though, and very dear to look at: Freddie with everything a bit too big for himself, wide eyes and wild hair and gangling hands on the type of slender frame that speaks of wartime rationing; Bel with the soft curve of her chin sweeping up to delicate ears, with dresses rather minutely fit to soft curves elsewhere. They both hate it, the newsreel work. She does too, but differently: with the boredom of someone who’d rather not be left alone with her thoughts.

Thus, they grow on her. They’re both of them strangely waifish and eager, but sometimes she’ll see what they can be. Freddie’s sharp restlessness pushes Bel’s reticent brilliance into blossom, and her delving, questioning mind focuses his wolfish hunger. So she stops herself when her mind wanders into protection; there are limits to fondness, after all, and they are not in need of her mothering.

A few folks from the newsreel department have taken to dashing round to the Maid of Muswell after work on Fridays. She goes along occasionally, too often feeling like someone’s maiden aunt. 

Bel is wearing something emerald green and quite close fitting, and she’s leaning one elbow on the bar waiting for a drink and watching Freddie. He’s sat intently at a table, talking to a chap from the darkroom. The bartender slides a glass of red wine to Bel’s elbow as Lix approaches, and Lix asks for whiskey, neat.

“Do you always drink whiskey?” In the low light, Bel’s wine is inky and her fingertips are neat, round, and very pale against the glass. 

“Whiskey is how we know god loves us.” Bel’s laugh is twinkling – like a bell, Lix thinks, and snorts. Bel’s turned so both elbows are against the bar; this way she can still watch Freddie while talking to Lix, and seem like she’s only scanning the room. Her posture pushes her breasts out, and she must know this: Bel takes care with every inch of her appearance. “Amongst other things,” Lix adds, and lets Bel see the way Lix’s eyes pass up and down her body.

Bel’s mouth parts. Silent; or the chatter of the pub covers the wet smack of its parting. “Is that so,” she says, not quite a question. Her heel clicks on the metal foot rail at the base of the bar. Lix tilts her head to one side, lets the moment linger. Bel looks away first, down at her chest and then back up to Lix, as if summoning courage. 

Before she can say anything, Freddie drops an empty glass on the bar and says, “There’s no reasoning with him. I give up.” Bel drops her heel and pushes off of the bar, standing straight. “I’m leaving,” Freddie says, tugging at his jacket; it’s too big and too easily pulled askew. If she were feeling fonder of him at the moment, Lix would straighten it for him.

“I’ll get my coat,” Bel says, then looks down at her still-full glass. Freddie waits.

“I can see you home,” Lix says, and Bel answers, in that slightly petulant tone she usually saves for Freddie, “I don’t need _seeing home_.”

Lix shrugs one shoulder. “If you’d like further company, is all I meant.” 

Freddie looks between them. “Yes, well, I’m going, and if no one is coming with me I shall look forward to seeing you both on Monday for another rousing day of hard-hitting news of babies in prams, church fetes, and local horseracing. Thrilling, our lives,” he adds as he pulls a cap out of his jacket pocket and jams it onto his head. His curls stick out unevenly on just one side. 

As he leaves, Bel turns to face the bar, wrapping both hands around her glass. “I meant it; I don’t need looking after.”

“I know that,” Lix says. “That’s not what I intended.” 

Bel looks at her, sidelong. Her lashes are long, mascaraed dark, and her mouth coral pink. “I did wonder,” she says. “If you were – a Sapphist.” She says the archaic word so delicately that Lix has to laugh, which makes Bel pink up and drop her gaze.

“I’m – not fussy,” Lix says. She shifts her weight just so, her forearm brushing Bel’s elbow. Bel doesn’t look up, but takes a breath, lifts her glass to her mouth, and swallows her wine down. 

She sets it back on the bar with a clatter. “Would you like to see me home?”

++

Bel’s flat isn’t what she expected: shades of tan and honey, furniture an unfashionable mix of other’s cast-offs. None of the deliberate lines and jeweled tones of her wardrobe. When she looks closer, though, as Bel pulls some gin from the icebox, she sees the ways Bel can afford to be deliberate: a green lampshade, a hat stand with clean, modern lines, a vase in cobalt outshining the wilted stems that droop over its edges. 

Lix takes one drink of her gin and soda before setting it down on the table. Bel might, eventually, muster herself enough to touch Lix, but she rather wants to make it easy on her. On them both. One hand on Bel’s thigh, its location intent enough; Bel looks down at her hand and wavers, glass still held in one hand and the other flat on the sofa between them. 

“Yes,” Lix says, as if giving permission; Bel looks up at her, tilts her chin, offers herself. Lix takes: Bel’s mouth, under hers, is soft. 

++

The single bed is too small for them both: too small for Lix on her own, really, but she’s used to finding her pleasure in tight spaces, and she folds her body over Bel’s so that Bel can spread out, can open herself up and take up space, and so that she can look, and look, at Bel’s pink-flushed skin.

She brings Bel to her peak with three fingers up inside her and the meat of her palm rubbing her, back of her hand braced against her own knee where she straddles Bel’s thigh. Bel’s hands, at first, rest on Lix’s hips, her waist, skim across her breasts, but as she gets close Bel drops her hands to her own breasts, pinches her nipples hard. She likes that Bel takes and takes; she’s barely touched Lix, and yet Lix feels taken in, swallowed up.

Her cunt is soaking Bel’s thigh, sliding wetly against it. Bel looks at her, blurry focused and sated, and watches Lix rub herself against her leg. “You’re extraordinary,” Bel says, as she reaches and digs her fingers into Lix’s thighs, thumbs pressing the edges of her cunt. 

Surprise bites her at the strength of Bel’s hands, and she groans. “Yes, dear,” she says, “get on with it.” Bel laughs, delighted, and flips one hand, curls it between her own thigh and Lix’s cunt, finds the hard mound of her clitoris. She’s unshy and unselfish, now, her other hand stroking up Lix’s side to press hard against her breast. Riding her hand harder, Lix gasps and hits her peak just as Bel pinches her nipple, hard.

“You little devil,” Lix says as she collapses onto her side. Bel budges over, pulling her wet hand from between Lix’s legs and cupping Lix’s cheek. Her thumb slides inside Lix’s mouth and she watches, intently, as Lix tastes herself. 

“I told you I don’t need looking after,” Bel says, a bit too fiercely to be blasé. Lix laughs; she can feel it rumble through her body and shake the bed, making the soft, abundant flesh of Bel’s breasts tremble. 

“Oh, darling, I never doubted. Forgive me for wanting to see you prove it.”

Bel’s mouth opens, a perfect round moue. “Freddie said –”

“I am in no way interested in what Freddie says right now,” Lix interrupts. Bel laughs; deep, almost hoarse. 

“Freddie said,” she persists, “that I should spend more time with you. Could use some cynicism in my life, he says.” Lix huffs, pretending offense. Bel drags one fingertip across Lix’s nipple. “I don’t think this was quite what he had in mind,” she says. Bel’s toes are cold, and her mind is quick, and she deserves much better than overseeing piddling newsreels.

++

A week later, Bel sits across from her at a tiny table at the Maid. Leaning in, she says, “Clarence is floating an idea for a new show. I want you with me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Carol Ann Duffy's "[The Light Gatherer](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-light-gatherer/)":
>
>> When you were small, your cupped palms  
> each held a candleworth under the skin, enough light to begin,  
> and as you grew,  
> light gathered in you, two clear raindrops  
> in your eyes,  
> warm pearls, shy,  
> in the lobes of your ears, even always  
> the light of a smile after your tears.


End file.
